And before that...

Last night I watched First Person, Errol Morris' new series for Bravo, taped on Wednesday. It seems to be a series of portraits of interesting people, kind of like Fast, Cheap and Out of Control except maybe without the same unifying theme...

Although, now that I think about it, this woman could easily have fit into fast cheap and out of control, as sort of a foil, the one person maintaining humanity in her 'struggle' with nature, which couldn't even be qualified as a struggle in her case. Uh, translated, she was amazing. She is my nominee for Ambassador for Humanity. An autistic woman (though it was undetectable in any of her mannerisms, so perhaps "recovered autistic?" Would that be the term?) who designed the system that 1/3 of American slaughterhouses use to get cattle calmly and cluelessly inside the building and dead before they know anything is strange. It was particularly interesting because you generally only hear about slaughterhouses from two perspectives: Violently Opposed, and Violently Defensive. This woman was just straight up skeptic, with the added touch that her autism seemed to be completely relevant to her ability to very nearly empathize with the animals and be very first personnally concerned for their comfort and lack of fear. Evidently, autistics think visually rather than linguistically.. something I can't even really wrap my mind around but guess what? Neither can a cow. From the other end, I mean.

It was stunning. She was amazing. I hope someone writes a big long biography of her, cause i'm gonna read it. Twice.

Then afterwards I started Dave Eggers' book (cavedwellers: it's called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and is by all accounts a heartbreaking work of staggering genius) and I thought to myself "Chen," i thought, "Chen, you live in a time when Dave Eggers, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, and Errol Morris, and Lars Von Trier, and and and... are alive and producing new work, and I think you owe God a big ol Thumbs Up.

So Thumbs Up, God. Thumbs the Fuck Up.

Except thumbs down on requiring me to get my doctor to sign a bunch of shit before i can start scuba training.

But thumbs up on that mozarella artichoke sandwich.

But the frogurt is also cursed.